CONCERNED Teesside doctors have described the latest proposals for NHS reform as “woolly” - with many admitting they do not know what the Government wants.

As previously reported, the new coalition Government will oversee what has been described as the biggest reform of the health service in its 63-year history, scrapping all Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) across England, and replacing them with up to 500 GP-led consortia.

Following the July release of a White Paper entitled Liberating the NHS: Equity and Excellence, the Conservative-Liberal coalition took a significant step closer to passing the proposals in Parliament this week, in the form of a new Health and Social Care Reform Bill.

Under its proposals, all 151 of England’s PCTs would be abolished, along with 10 SHAs, leaving 516 employees from NHS Middlesbrough, NHS Stockton, NHS Redcar and Cleveland and NHS Hartlepool - as well as 260 at Newcastle-based SHA NHS North East - facing job losses.

Some 24,500 jobs are expected to go nationally, with the redundancy bill put at £1bn, although it is expected up to 70% of staff could be employed in the new structure.

GPs will be given around 80% of the NHS budget - £80bn a year - to commission services for patients.

However, some practitioners have revealed they are still concerned and confused about how being given the responsibility for managing national health budgets will work in practice.

A Middlesbrough practice manager, who asked not to be named, said: “I don’t think we know enough about it to make a valued judgement.

“There seems to be good opportunities to improve patient care under the proposals, but it depends on how it will be implemented.

“But, at the moment, it’s all pie in the sky. You can see how woolly the White Paper is. I hope it’s going improve things, but I don’t know.”

Currently, there are five ‘pathfinder groups’ in the North-east, including Langbaurgh Commissioning Consortium, made up of GPs from Redcar and Cleveland, who will become one of the first consortia.

They are now busy working with NHS Redcar and Cleveland by shadowing the PCT and preparing to commission new health services, ahead of statutory commissioning powers ceasing in April 2013.

However, a practice manager from Redcar and Cleveland, who also asked not to be named, said while some practices see the new reforms as an opportunity, others view them as a threat to the health service.

The source admitted: “I don’t really know what the government wants. I haven’t really figured it out.

“I see it through practice manager’s eyes as extra work within the practice with a view to retaining what we have already got, so I think it’s almost a threat rather than a way forward.

“It’s very airy-fairy at the moment. There’s not enough detail there for anyone to be able to say whether they will be able to maintain levels of service and income or not.

“It’s just a shame successive governments feel as though they need to meddle with the health of the nation as much as they do.”

The practice manager added that GPs want what’s best for their patients and could arguably be best-placed to commission the right services within a community.

But he added doctors could become too concerned about budgets - shifting focus away from patient care.

The manager said: “The majority of GPs want to come to work, see patients, make them well and go home. You don’t want to have to think about the bigger picture of budgets on a daily basis; you just want to see the patient one-to-one and do what’s best for that patient.”

The practice manager’s comments reflect a clear consensus among the health professionals the Evening Gazette contacted, as GPs told us nobody really knows how the proposals will work in practice and “the devil will be in the detail”.

The North East SHA, the four PCTs - and both North Tees and South Tees foundation trusts, said they were unable to comment and referred the Gazette to the Department of Health.

A subsequent statement by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “This legislation will deliver changes that will improve outcomes for patients and save the NHS £1.7 billion every year money that will be reinvested into services for patients.”

Dr Michael Dixon, chairman of the NHS Alliance, claimed the reforms would “empower doctors and their patients to make a real difference to health services”.